Few music scenes put more pressure on themselves than the D.C. punk and post-hardcore scene. For decades, the scene evolved frantically, as if driven by internal competition, with bands pushing themselves to the limits on each new album, searching to find a new angle to differentiate it from the last one.
Of course, that perpetual quest for innovation resulted in as many missteps as breakthroughs. Many bands cracked under the pressure, plenty of them breaking up prematurely. Black Eyes epitomized the sink-or-swim life cycle of D.C. bands: They began as post-hardcore traditionalists on their debut 7-inch, swiftly evolved into something even greater and more experimental on their debut album, then confounded even their most loyal followers with a demanding, free-jazz-caked sophomore album, and imploded shortly after.
D.C.'s punk bands spawned as quickly as mosquitoes, and averaged about the same life expectancy, but there was always another batch ready to replace the last oneuntil one day there wasn't. The scene eventually froze after figureheads Fugazi broke up, leaving no successors to their throne. It was as if Fugazi has accomplished all they could, pushing the boundaries of post-hardcore as far as they could go, and none of their disciples were so arrogant as to think they could somehow improve on the groundwork that band laid. While there are countless rock bands all over the world perfectly comfortable coming across as lesser copies of The Beatles, but there are very few punk bands willing to be seen as a lesser version of Fugazi.
It's damn hard, then, not to admire the Baltimore art-punk trio Double Dagger for chancing it and revisiting the sounds of '90s post-hardcore, even at the risk of being tagged plagiarists. Would the D.C. scene still be thriving if its bands had put less pressure on themselves to innovate, and embraced simply making a great punk record as a perfectly noble means to an end?
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This isn't to say that Double Dagger doesn't bring anything new to the tableby virtue of being a bass-drums-vocal trio, sans guitar, the group has its own, novel rumblebut there's little on the group's excellent new EP, Masks, that hasn't been done before by Fugazi or Les Savy Fav of June of 44, and Double Dagger is the first to acknowledge their debt to their record collection.
The EP opens rowdily with "Imitation Is The Most Boring Form of Flattery," a sarcastic blast of party punk culminates with cautionary shouts of, "On and on and on and on, it's the same old song!" For all its rhetoric about the dangers on repetition"don't be just another repeater," singer Nolen Strals bellowsthe song also reads as a defense of classicism. "Our history has no future," Strals yells, ready to resist and fight to keep the music he loves, even if it requires him to become that repeater.
On Double Dagger's 2009 sophomore album, More, the group broke up their Fugazi-esque screeds with moodier, math-rock musings, moments that, though interesting, slowed the record's momentum. On the five-song Masks EP, though, they make the most of their allotted time, hurling through their short set like studio time is still as expensive as it was in the '90s. Only the six-and-a-half-minute "Sleeping With the TV On" slows the tempo down a bit, but only to better savor its monster riff and build to its earned, climactic chant: "I don't want to go home!/ I don't wanna go home!/ Unless I'm going home to you!" Even when he opens his heart, Strals mostly sings in exclamations. It's that enthusiasm that demonstrates how punk doesn't always require innovation to stay fresh.
